The views published here are of an ecosocialist nature and from the broad red, green and black political spectrum. The opinions expressed are the personal opinions of the writers and are not necessarily the view of any political parties or groupings that they belong to. Please feel free to comment on the posts here. If you would like to contact us directly, you can email us at mike.shaughnessy@btinternet.com. Follow the blog on Twitter @MikeShaugh

Saturday, 27 April 2019

The latest
IPCC Special Report (October 2018) is our last alarm bell for stopping mass
human and environmental destruction caused by human-induced climate change. Its
findings were alarming-rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes before the
year 2030 are what is required if we are to have any chance of staying well
below 1.5° global warming. The failure of governments to adequately deal with
this man-made crisis is already impacting millions of lives, and the most
vulnerable worldwide are always hit the hardest. Short-sighted market logic has
delayed an adequate response for way too long. We need unprecedented political
will to achieve an ecologically just Europe, where we accept our full climate
responsibility and where our climate is not sacrificed for the profit of the
few.

Climate
action is our number one priority in European United Left/Nordic Green Left
(GUE/NGL). We do not see it as a stand-alone struggle; it includes struggles
for decent jobs, high living standards and gender and racial equality. We
oppose polices that subordinate essential natural resources of life and common
goods, like water, energy, air, a clean environment and health, to the forces
of profit-seeking. We fight against capitalism, neoliberal policies and
corporate capture.

The panic
button needs to be hit to declare climate emergency. We need serious action
now; there is no more time to waste.

A legal basis for climate justice

The
principles of climate justice are central to how we approach climate action,
ensuring that the transition is fair and leaves no one behind. The struggle for
climate action is deeply intertwined with all human rights struggles as well as
the ecological crisis. Climate justice needs to have a legal basis and be a
fundamental value in the legal systems of the EU and Member States. Only then
can climate litigation succeed in ensuring our targets meet the science and are
not just political compromises. Only then can all policy work towards strong
and ambitious climate goals, through the prism of climate justice.

We urgently need to:

insert
climate justice into the legal bases of the EU and Member States and ensure
climate policies follow the principles of climate justice

ensure just
transition is at the heart of climate action, alleviate energy poverty,
guarantee the right to equal access to energy and stop policies that burden
vulnerable and marginalised people

ensure a
long-term vision and road map to achieve all Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs) and use the SDGs as essential benchmarks for all legislative actions in
every policy field, acknowledging that climate goals are related to all other
SDGs

revise the EU
2050 long-term carbon-neutral strategy to focus on climate justice, 100%
renewables and early action to reach carbon neutrality by 2040 at the latest

An end to fossil fuels

A rapid and
clear expiry date for fossil fuels is urgently needed to keep global warming
well below 1.5°C. We believe in a right to energy, and this becomes a right to
renewable energy when considering the human right to live in a safe and
habitable environment. Instead of continuing to allow the fossil industry to
set the agenda, we need command and control policies at EU and Member State
levels. Our only chance lies in a sustainable, decentralised and accessible
energy supply, which provides jobs and guarantees our energy sovereignty. We
cannot afford to be shy in investing in this renewable future.

We urgently need to:

immediately
revise our 2030 targets to commit to a reduction target of at least 65% of
greenhouse gases, and revise all other climate and energy targets to what is
scientifically necessary to curb global warming well below 1.5°C

commit to a
fossil fuel phase out date, which includes gas, by 2030 and a rapid phase out
nuclear energy and first generation biofuels, including palm oil and soy, as
well as excluding the fossil fuel industry completely from all decision-making
processes

move away
from false ‘solutions’, gas and nuclear reliance and start realising the
potential of natural carbon sinks; reject geoengineering and techno-fixes, such
as carbon-capture and storage, which facilitate dirty industries

increase
investment in renewable energy, energy efficiency and energy savings in all
sectors

enshrine the
right to renewable energy, so that energy that does not harm our planet is
accessible and affordable to all

Resist the constant growth model

Global
capitalism dictates constant growth, and all growth is reliant on natural
resources, which are, of course, limited. Ending the constant growth model is a
big task, and so immediately, measures must be taken to counteract the constant
growth model. This means regulating to ensure sustainable production and sustainable
systems all around us and fight for new economic and social policies. Allowing
GDP to be the sacred indicator of social progress is ignorant of the ecocide
this unregulated growth creates. All sectors, as obliged by the Paris
Agreement, must decarbonise. To do this, we need new production models that
fully incorporate the polluter pays and circular economy principles and resist
the harmful unsustainable forces of global capitalism.

We urgently need to:

implement a
European green rule: privilege the environment and climate over the free
market, end the quest for profit and rethink the functioning of our society
according to ecosystem’s limits

rapidly shift
to sustainable agriculture and fisheries, including shorter supply chains, full
environmental compliance and food sovereignty. This means a swift move away
from the current agro-industrial intensification model, including patenting
elements of life, towards ecological, sustainable farming and fishing practices
and local, sustainable food systems that promote genetic diversity

completely
transform the direction on the EU’s trade, commercial and investment policies,
ensuring only they are environmentally and socially sustainable. This means no
trade without ratification and implementation of the Paris Agreement, including
climate and environment clauses in trade deals, and proper regulation of the
climate impact of imports and exports

ensure that
the true meaning of circular economy principles are fully implemented in all
legislation and processes; promote local consumption and production based on
these principles of reuse, recycle and repair to stop planned obsolescence
business strategies and adapt consumption to the limits of the Planet

properly fund
social services, increase smart and green spatial and urban planning and ensure
accessibility, social justice and equity in the allocation of public services;
radically rethink transport, focusing on zero-emission public transport which
should be free for all and promote active mobility

protect and
invest in our biodiversity and carbon sinks, by prioritising sufficient funding
for the conservation and restoration of woodlands, peatlands and other
habitats, particularly protecting native species; adopt control and
surveillance measures on a European scale for the pests and pathogens that are
decimating European forests and create specific support measures to prevent and
fight forest fires

Direct the transition

Market
‘solutions’, such as carbon markets, have been successfully pushed for by
industry to become the prevalent logic in the EU. Market approaches are
inherently incapable of effectively reducing emissions and have led us to the
standstill where we are now. They create hands-off, ‘cost-effective’, fake
responses to climate change, completely shirking governments of the
responsibility to direct the rapid transition to a sustainable society. Carbon
credits are a right to pollute, and we utterly reject this concept. Dirty
industries must be directly regulated and renewables massively endorsed. The polluter
pays principle must apply, the costs cannot be externalised to society and the
environment. This means that the companies that extract and sell fossil fuels
must pay up, as well as the big polluting industries. Nature, biodiversity and
a habitable planet are not commodities that require cost-benefit analyses,
their value cannot be monetised, nor can it be ignored.

We urgently need to:

end the
liberalisation agenda of the EU for energy, recognise it is as a common good
and promote the socialisation of the energy sector; allow for massive state
investment into public renewable energy

democratise
and decentralise energy and ensure an expansion in community-level energy
projects

reject all
market-based climate policies because they are climate delaying tactics; stand
for goal-based direct regulation on greenhouse gas emissions by directly
setting and monitoring legally binding emissions reduction goals for each
sector

stop
reforming the broken market system and immediately abolish the EU Emissions
Trading System (EU ETS)

introduce
binding regulations on emissions for shipping and aviation - offsetting schemes
such as CORSIA cannot be considered as climate action; directly regulate
shipping and aviation in climate policies by mandating emissions reduction
goals and emissions performance standards; ensure public investment into
alternative sustainable fuels for both and ensure that these industries are
properly taxed

encourage
Member States to green their tax systems making sure that the big polluters pay
their share, not the people. Regulate financial markets so that financial
actors comply with strict sustainability and social criteria that works towards
the necessary transitions

Investment not austerity

Climate
action needs to be about public investment, not austerity. We reject the
neoliberal notions of leaving climate action up to individuals; we place the
responsibility firmly on governments and lawmakers, to lead with public
investment and ensure that the private sector can only invest sustainably.
Climate justice means the burdens and benefits of action must be distributed
fairly. People cannot be left picking up the tab to the advantage of the Big
Polluters. Ambitious climate action must mean a Just Transition, a framework of
social interventions to make sure that no communities or regions are left
behind in the transition to a clean planet. A massive mobilisation of funds is
needed for the green transition, including its direct and indirect
consequences.

We urgently need to:

establish a
Just Transition Fund and ensure decent green jobs are created in vulnerable
regions particularly; ensure that no community or region suffers
disproportionately from the transition to a clean planet

revise how
Europe spends its funds, take account of the Ecological deficit we create and
ensure a massive public Green Investment Plan

end all
direct and indirect subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, including
quantitative easing at the European Central Bank

ensure public
interest research and development on environmentally-friendly low-carbon
technologies and introduce the adequate incentives

Ambitious global action

Climate
action needs to take place at the global level too, with an ambitious and
coordinated global response. Those who contribute the least to climate change,
are the ones who suffer the most from its consequences. This is why itis essential that the EU and Member States
act on their historic responsibility in emitting greenhouse gases and take full
account of their financial and technological resources.We must do more and reach low carbon
neutrality by 2040 at the latest whilst helping adaptation efforts. Climate
justice at the international level should be based on effective partnerships
and international solidarity. The Commission and the Council negotiate about climate
on behalf of all EU Member States, but Member States need to become more active
and involved at the international level and loudly advocate the principles of
climate justice.

We urgently need to:

take
responsibility for our historical share in global warming; compensate for the
climate debt we have built up and ensure the most vulnerable countries are
sufficiently resourced to adapt to global warming and rising sea levels

limit our
global ecological footprint to help protect our oceans and forests worldwide,
and support measures to protect and recover these lungs of the earth

call for a
legal, universal definition of climate refugees, ensure that there are safe and
legal ways to the EU and that their right to asylum is respected in every
Member State. Call for a legal and universal definition of internally displaced
people due to climatic reasons, ensuring that our foreign policies are oriented
towards protecting their rights.

secure
equitable and sufficient flows of climate finance under the Paris agreement and
ensure grants are the financial instrument favoured over loans. Ensure that the
Green Fund is replenished to €100 billion

ensure that
all development and trade policies include, and are streamlined with, climate
goals, and ensure a readily available funding mechanism forLoss and Damage

advocate for
an International Convention on Fossil Fuels to keep them in the ground

oblige the
European Union and all its Member State to act with high ambition at
international climate conferences, play a more active role in the yearly global
summit, and act on the COP conclusions every year and; that Member State and EU
use their climate diplomacy to spur other global actors to pursue adequate
decarbonisation strategies

Together we fight for change

As one of the
richest continents and main contributors to climate change, Europe has a duty
to ensure rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. We are in dire need of
just and sustainable structural reforms throughout society - bearing in mind
the historical responsibility of the rich, big polluters. Making capitalism
just a bit greener will not succeed in halting climate change, it will only
delay climate action further. To date, dirty industries have been influencing
our climate policies. Now we need our climate action to be accountable to the
people, not the climate confusers. We need to place people and the
sustainability of the environment above profit. If we do not implement radical
system changes right now, the commercialisation of the earth will continue to
put the interests of the multinational companies first. This puts our planet
and ourselves at an unacceptable risk. We have a responsibility to avert the
climate crisis with urgency and preserve the earth for future generations. The
only effective response is to immediately address this crisis as a climate
emergency. Together we can change the system to save the climate!

Wednesday, 24 April 2019

Key effects
of global warming were reported bluntly to millions of TV viewers in the
documentary Climate Change:
The Facts, on BBC One on Thursday 18 April.

“It may sound
frightening”, the super-popular TV naturalist David Attenborough said,
introducing the show, “but the scientific evidence is that if we have not taken
dramatic action within the next decade, we could face irreversible damage to
the natural world and the collapse of our societies”.

The press
loved it. “A call to arms”, The Guardian said. Would it “wake up
philanthropists, investors and governments to act?” Forbes asked.

I wondered:
why now?

The BBC
hasn’t exactly rushed to portray global warming accurately. In 2011, two
decades after the international climate talks started at Rio, scientists were slamming
the BBC for giving air time to climate science deniers. In 2014, a BBC
memo told journalists to stop pretending “balance” was needed between climate
science and its deniers – but the practice continued, leading to
another edict in September last year. By that time, researchers had started
refusing to come into BBC studios to debate deniers.

But
high-profile BBC journalists still felt compelled to interview anti-science
nutters who are paid by the fossil fuel industry to advise Donald Trump. In
October last year, when the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change report outlined measures to limit warming to 1.5
degrees above the pre-industrial level, Evan Davies of Newsnight gave Myron
Ebell air-time to rubbish it.

By some
standards, the BBC is doing well. After all, it took the Vatican 359 years to apologise
for forcing Galileo Galilei to deny his finding that the earth goes around
the sun. The BBC aired Climate Change: The Facts a mere 30 years after
scientists nailed down the causal role of fossil fuel combustion and other
economic activity in global warming. Well done.

So, why now?
Two main reasons, to my mind.

► 1. The
reality of global warming is becoming blindingly obvious. Twenty of the hottest
years ever recorded were in the last 22 years. Effects such as floods and the
wrecking of agriculture have been felt in the global south for many years. Now
rich countries, too, are being hit. Climate Change: The Facts dealt with this
well, showing the devastation caused by wildfires and rising sea levels in the
USA.

The school
strikes have spread apparently completely outside of the influence of, let
alone control by, existing political or environmentalist organisations. XR
seems politically similar to earlier environmentalist groups – but, certainly
here in the UK, no such group previously has brought so many people into
potential confrontation with the law.

The political
establishment’s instinct, I think, is to use a combination of dialogue,
concessions, co-optation, and rhetoric to tame, constrain and control these
movements. That’s not to say that repression will play no part: the police
could abandon, at least partially, their softly-softly approach to XR. But social
control under capitalism is as much about ideology and opinions as it is about
violence and repression. (I am thinking about the UK, although some of these
points apply more widely.)

Power, and
the wealth it represents, can live with a “climate movement” that does not
threaten its control of the economy and of society. Narratives that presume
that existing political structures and parties could and should “solve” the
global warming problem will be able to echo through the mainstream. Power has
an interest in convincing people it is listening to them – and, since it knows
people are not stupid, part of its technique is actually to do so.

The last 20
minutes of Climate Change: The Facts told the standard mainstream tale of how
governments are dealing with global warming. It highlighted the 2015 Paris
agreement – but not the fact that it simply continued a quarter of a century of
negotiations, during which global fossil fuel use rose by half. It acknowledged
that oil and coal companies resist change – but did not mention how governments
support them with hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies.

A real
conversation about tackling global warming will start not with the
international climate talks but with a recognition of their disastrous failure.

I am not a
crazy conspiracy theorist who thinks David Attenborough is an instrument of
some shadowy controllers. But clearly he is a suitable figurehead to bring
“solutions” to global warming, that have been discussed for years among small
groups of diplomats, politicians and NGOs at the climate talks, to a wider
public. Because, as the Daily
Telegraph put it, “we all trust Attenborough”.

The
mainstream media discussion, of which Climate Change: The Facts is part,
assumes that not only existing political structures, but also economic and social
structures, can deal with the problem.

The
possibility of bigger social transformations directed at overturning
relationships of power and wealth – and the thought that these may be the most
effective way, or even the only way, that the fossil fuel juggernaut can be
stopped – is given little or no air-time. The idea that, in the rich world,
people could live more happily outside the corporate-controlled fuel-guzzling
technological systems in which they are currently trapped, is almost completely
absent. So are suggestions that the global south is not doomed to follow this
so-called “path of development”.

Admittedly George
Monbiot’s call to “overthrow this system that is eating the planet” made it
on to Frankie Boyle’s late-night comedy show. The media knows how to
marginalise and patronise us, too.

I hope that
the new climate movements will become open forums where ideas about radical
social, political and technological change will be discussed. Let’s resist the
pressure to corall the conversation within the mainstream’s ideological fences.

Take XR’s
main political demand in the UK – that the country’s economy should be carbon
neutral by 2025. Easy to say, hard to achieve.

One of the
first questions XR will have to answer is the one posed in France: what about
attacks on working people’s living standards packaged and presented as measures
to deal with climate change? Such as the proposed diesel tax that triggered the
“yellow vests” revolt in December last year.

Working-class
people in France saw the tax as a neo-liberal austerity measure, dressed in
“environmentalist” clothes, and revolted against it accordingly. “The elites
talk about the end of the world, while we talk about the end of the month”, was
(reportedly) a recurring
theme.

A “climate
movement” in the global north, divorced from the justified anger against
neo-liberalism displayed by many “yellow vests”, is doomed to fail on a social
level, and fatally flawed politically.

The whole
point of neo-liberal “austerity” policies, practiced by president Emmanuel
Macron in France today and by successive UK governments since the 1980s, is to
protect and support the constantly-expanding capitalist economy, and the way it
is structured to benefit the 1% – which, in turn, is the main cause of global
warming.

The “yellow
vests”, other anti-austerity movements, the school strikers and XR “rebels” are
all up against the same machine. We all need common language and common
politics (for practical suggestions, see the links at the end).

The issues we
should focus on, I think, are “how can we unite these movements?” and “how can
we develop real democracy, independent of the state, through which to work out
measures adequate to prevent dangerous climate change?”. Rather than, “what
advice can we give existing political structures – who have known for years how
climate change could be avoided and have refused to act?”

If you think
I am exaggerating about the danger of climate protest being co-opted and
controlled, think about the fight against racism.

In the early
1980s, as the post-war social consensus was breaking down and Margaret Thatcher
became UK prime minister, that fight centred on the 1981 riots. Black Britons, and
others in their communities, turned the “inner cities” upside down and demanded
better.

In the 1990s,
when Tony Blair’s “New Labour” took over from the Tories, anti-racist
narratives were increasingly co-opted and controlled. The 1999 Macpherson
report into the killing of Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager, was a turning
point: it found that the notoriously botched murder investigation showed that
the police force was “institutionally racist”.

The
establishment’s embrace of anti-racism produced many positive outcomes. Victims
less often faced the wall of hostility the Lawrence family had faced. In
schools, on the streets and in football grounds, open expressions of racism
were challenged. The popular press changed, veering between subtle and
subliminal forms of racism to competing for hypocritical “moral” high ground in
denouncing racist individuals. But the social and economic structures that
multiply and encourage racism went untouched. The Blair government pressed
ahead with sanctions against, and the 2003 invasion of, Iraq – resulting in the
fundamentally racist mass murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Inherently racist immigration policies were tightened.

The end of
this process is the current resurgence of racism. The structural underpinnings
are UK support for new wars in the Middle East, in the first place the
genocidal Saudi onslaught on Yemen, and the vicious “hostile environment” for
migrants. The ideological outcomes are vicious Islamophobia throughout society
and the recent upsurge of racist street actions.

Climate
change, like racism, is a big, multi-faceted problem that defies simple
“solutions”. Dealing with it means dealing with the social and economic system
that has produced it. Don’t let the political elite and its media set the terms
of our discussions about how to do so. Some People
& Nature articles on measures needed to combat global warming:

Monday, 22 April 2019

The worldwide
protests organised by Extinction Rebellion,
have put the issue of the ecological crisis into mainstream political discourse. Non-violent
actions have been carried out in more than 30 countries and within them, many
more towns and cities. But it has been in the UK, the birthplace of the
movement, that has seen the most spectacular actions, particularly in London. Four
central London locations were held, and blockaded, three of them illegally, for
almost a week, with over a 1,000 arrests being made by police.

It has
astonished me that protesters held on for so long in London, but I had
obviously misjudged the numbers that Extinction Rebellion could mobilise,
especially those willing to be arrested in the process. The Metropolitan
Police, have, by and large, handled the demonstrations well, and
proportionately, as far as I can tell. I’ve been out of London for a few days,
and only managed to visit the Parliament Square camp, on the second day of that
encampment, and all was very quiet whilst I was there.

The
right-wing media has attempted to smear the protesters all week, but the best
they came up with was to call them ‘middle-class.’ Since when did the Daily Mail
see being middle-class as an insult? The accusation was that
working-class people had more to worry about, low wages, insecure jobs and public
services cut to the bone, which may well have some truth in it, but when was
the last time the Daily Mail etc championed the causes of these people? Never, is
the answer.

There are
other movements that have sprung up recently to try to force action on the
ecological crisis, such as the school students strike and Earth Strike, both
also international in their scope. The catalyst for all of this activity seems
to have been last year’s International Panel on Climate Change report, which
warned that we only had twelve years to get our act together on carbon
emissions or face runaway climate change. People have observed the almost complete
lack of urgency on the part of governments’, and concluded that they must be dragged kicking and screaming into action.

Protests were
confined to only the legal gathering at Marble Arch in London by Easter Monday,
and Extinction Rebellion has said they will democratically decide what comes
next. Judging by what we have seen in the last week, whatever is decided will be
imaginative and well supported. Protests will continue throughout the summer,
of that I think we can be certain.

What made
this rebellion brilliant was that it demonstrated that if you have the numbers,
especially the huge numbers willing to get arrested, the authorities cannot
cope. With police numbers cut back over the last decade, they found it impossible
to take back these occupied sites, and have storage space for those taken into
custody. Many of those arrested returned to the protests when they were
released after a few hours, some of whom were arrested again.

Extinction Rebellion appeared to have a misinformation plan in place too. There were rumours of the
London underground network being targeted for disruption, diverting police
resources, but in the end only a three person protest took place where
protesters glued themselves to an overland train. Similarly, Extinction
Rebellion announced an intention to close Heathrow Airport, resulting police
being drafted in from Wales to defend the airport, only for about a dozen protesters to
stand on a roundabout, causing no disruption at all.

This is how
things are likely to carry on, with mass actions as well as smaller guerrilla actions
taken by small groups, similar to the way the suffragettes operated in the early
twentieth century. Also like the suffragettes, they have clear and simple
demands, votes for women for the suffragettes, the calling of a climate
emergency by Extinction Rebellion. But beneath the surface, as with the
suffragettes, Extinction Rebellion has deeper, more radical aims.

I was interested
to note the language used on Extinction Rebellion’s twitter releases, words
like ‘held’ an area, and ‘retaken’ an area, as well as calling the protesters ‘rebels’.
It was all good natured, but the language reveals something of thinking of the
organisers, I think.

There will
surely come a point, when most of those participating in this rebellion will
realise that governments’ are not only unwilling to take remedial action, but
are also unable to do so. The democratic system is so corrupt, with corporate interests
the only ones that count for anything. As some placards on the protest stated, ‘system
change not climate change’ a slogan used by ecosocialists for some time now,
and I know of some ecosocialists who have been involved.

At this
point, the rebels will either have to give up and go home, or go from rebels to
revolutionaries. This does not mean resorting to violence, although at some point the
authorities are likely to turn to violence. The power that we have just had a small
glimpse of this past week, should be ramped up, but that will take more
numbers. We saw how the police struggled with 1,000 people arrested, what would
it be like with 10,000? With 100,000? If these kind of numbers can be mobilised,
anything is possible.

There is also
the Earth Strike planned for 27
September. If the workers, organised and unorganised can be brought on board
for the revolution, we will see an unstoppable force, powerful enough to bring
truly radical change. We could be on the verge of something almost unimaginable only a few months ago, real system change, or to put it another way, a revolution.

Wednesday, 17 April 2019

Capitalist
dynamics are at the very heart of the current crisis that humanity faces over
global warming.

When we talk
of “global warming,” we’re talking about the rapid — and on-going — rise in the
average world-wide surface and ocean temperature. Thus far a rise of 0.8
degrees Celsius (1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1880. According to an ongoing
temperature analysis conducted by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space
Studies, two-thirds of this temperature increase has occurred since 1975. A
one-degree rise in temperature might seem like no big deal. As the NASA
scientists point out, however, “A one-degree global change is significant
because it takes a vast amount of heat to warm all the oceans, atmosphere, and
land by that much.”

We know that
carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels is at the heart of
the problem. For many centuries the proportion of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere ranged between 200 and 300 parts per million. By the 1950s the
growth of industrial capitalism since the 1800s had pushed this to the top of
this range — 310 parts per million. Since then the concentration of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere has risen very rapidly — to more than 410 parts per
million by 2018. This is the result of the vast rise in the burning of fossil
fuels in the era since World War 2 — coal, petroleum, natural gas.

The problem
is rooted in the very structure of capitalism itself. Cost-shifting is an
essential feature of the capitalist mode of production. An electric power
company burns coal to generate electricity because the price per kilowatt hour
from coal-fired electricity has long been cheaper than alternatives. But the
emissions from burning coal travel downwind and cause damage to the respiratory
systems of thousands of people — including preventable deaths to people with
respiratory ailments. This is in addition to the powerful contribution to
global warming from the carbon dioxide emissions.

But the power firm doesn’t
have to pay money for these human costs. If the firm had to pay fees that would
be equivalent to the human cost in death, respiratory damage and contribution
to global warming and its effects, burning coal would not be profitable for the
power company.

Firms also
externalize costs onto workers, such as the health effects of stress or
chemical exposures. The “free market” pundit or hack economist might deny that
companies externalize costs onto workers. They might say that wages and
benefits paid to workers for each hour of work measure the cost of labor. But
the human cost of work can be increased without an increase in the compensation
paid to workers. If a company speeds up the pace of work, if people are working
harder, if they are more tightly controlled by supervisors, paced by machines
or software, this increases the cost in human terms.

Toxic
chemicals used in manufacturing, in agriculture and other industries pose a
threat to both the workers and to people who live in nearby areas. Usually
working class people live in neighborhoods near polluting industries, and often
these are communities of color. This is another form of capitalist
cost-shifting.

State
regulation of pesticides or air pollution often ends up acting as a “cover” for
the profit-making firms. Despite the existence of pollutants generated by leaky
oil refineries and pollutants emitted by other industries in industrial areas
in California — such as the “cancer alley” of oil refineries in the Contra
Costa County areaor the similar
refinery zone in Wilmington — the government agencies set up to deal with air
pollution in the Bay Area and Los Angeles County protected polluters for years
by focusing almost exclusively on pollution generatedby vehicle exhaust. In this way the South
Coast Air Quality Management District and the Bay Area Air Quality Management
District have been an example of “regulatory capture” by corporate capital.

Power firms
that generate vast amounts of carbon dioxide emissions — and firms that make
profits from building fossil-fuel burning cars and trucks or from the sale of
gasoline and diesel and jet fuel — have not had to pay any fees or penalties
for the growing build-up of the carbon dioxide layer in the atmosphere. The
global warming crisis thus has its explanation in cost shifting and the search
for short-term profits and ever growing markets — features that are at the
heart of the capitalist system.

If global
capitalism continues with “business as usual”, the warming will have major
impacts — killer heat waves, more ocean heat pumping energy into hurricanes and
cyclones, rising ocean levels from melting of ice in the polar regions and
melting of glaciers, destruction of corals in the oceans, and a greater danger
to the survival of many species of living things.

Previous
attempts to get global agreement to cut back burning of fossil fuels have been
ineffective. The Paris accords merely proposed voluntary targets. NASA
scientist James Hansen described it as a “fraud”: “There is no action, just
promises.” According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the
dire situation calls for “rapid and far-reaching transitions…unprecedented in
terms of scale.” The IPCC warns that there needs to be a 45 percent world-wide
reduction in the production of heat-trapping gases (mainly carbon dioxide) by
2030 if humanity is to avoid dangerous levels of global warming.

Clearly a
global change is needed. But how to bringthis about?

The concept
of a Green New Deal has been proposed by Green Party activists, climate justice
groups and various radicals for some time. The slogan is based on a comparison
with the statist planning used by President Roosevelt to respond to the
economic crisis of the 1930s as well as the vast and rapid transition of
American industry to war production at the beginning of World War 2. The idea
is that the crisis of global warming should be treated with equal urgency as
the mass unemployment of 1933 or the fascist military threat of the early
1940s.

After the
election to Congress of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — a member of Democratic
Socialists of America — the Green New Deal resolution was introduced into the
US Congress by Ocasio-Cortezand Senator
Ed Markey. This lays out a set of ambitious goals, such as 100 percent electric
power generation in the USA from “clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy
sources.”

Other goals
include “removing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing…as
much as is technologically feasible” and “overhauling” the transport sector “to
eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions” from transport “through
investment in zero-emission vehicles, accessible publictransportation and high speed rail.” Along
with this resolution, a letter was sent to the US Congress from 626
environmental organizations backing the Green New Deal proposal. These
environmental groups made it quite clear they oppose any market-based tinkering
— reforms that we know won’t work — such as “cap and trade” (trading in
pollution “rights”).

Many have
proposed “public-private partnerships” and public subsidies to private
corporations. Robert Pollin, writing in New Left Review, talks about
“preferential tax treatment for clean-energy investments” and “market
arrangements through government procurement contracts.” All part of a so-called
“green industrial policy.” A green capitalism, in other words.

But workers
are often skeptical of these promises. Companies will simply lay people off,
under-pay them, or engage in speed-up and dangerous work practices — if they
can profit by doing so. For example, low pay, work intensification and injuries
have been a problem at the Tesla electric car factory which has received 5
billion dollars in government subsidies. Tesla recently laid off 7 percent of
its workforce (over three thousand workers) in pursuit of profitability.

An
alternative approach that looks to statist central planning has been proposed
by Richard Smith — an eco-socialist who is also a member of Democratic
Socialists of America. Smith characterizes the proposal by Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez this way:

Ocasio-Cortez…is
a bold,feminist, anti-racist and
socialist-inspired successor to FDR…She’s taking the global warming discussion
to a new level…She’s not calling for cap and trade or carbon taxes or
divestment or other “market” solutions. She’s issuing a full-throated call for
de-carbonization — in effect throwing the gauntlet down to capitalism and
challenging the system…[1]

Smith
believes the goals of the Green New Deal can’t be realized through things like
“incentives” — and he’s right about that. He points out that the Green New Deal
resolution “lacks specifics” about how the goals will be reached. To realize
the goal of “de-carbonizing” the economy, he proposes a three-part program:

Declare a
state of emergency to suppress fossil fuel use. Ban all new extraction.
Nationalize the fossil fuel industry to phase it out.

Create a
federal program in the style of the 1930s Works Progress Administration to
shift the workforce of the shut-down industries to “useful but low emissions”
areas of the economy “at equivalent pay and benefits.”

Launch a
“state-directed” crash program to phase in renewable electric power production,
electric transport vehicles and other methods of transport not based on burning
fossil fuels.

Even though
“AOC explicitly makes a powerful case for state planning,” Smith says, a
weakness of the Green New Deal resolution, from his perspective, is the failure
to “call for a National Planning Board to reorganize, reprioritize and
restructure the economy.” When he talks about nationalization, he notes “We do
not call for expropriation.” He’s talking about buying out the shareholders at
“fair market value.” This is essentially a proposal for a largely
state-directed form of capitalist economy — a form of state capitalism.

Smith’s
proposal is wildly unrealistic. Are we to believe that the corporate-media
influenced American electoral scheme can be used to elect politicians — through
the business-controlled Democratic Party — to enact a multi-trillion dollar
program of seizures of the fossil fuel industry, auto manufacturers, and
chemical firms and set up a planning board to direct the economy?

The American
working class did make important gains in the Thirties — such as the Fair Labor
Standards Act (minimum wage, unemployment insurance) and Aid to Families with
Dependent Children. These concessions were only won due to an uprising of the
American working class in a context of vast struggles around the world — a
working class revolution in Spain, plant occupations in France, a communist
insurgency in China, the Communists holding on in Russia. In that moment
capitalism faced a threat to its very existence.

The USA saw a
huge working class rebellion between 1933 and 1937 — millions of workers on
strike, hundreds of thousands of workers creating new unions from scratch,rising influence for revolutionary
organizations, a thousand workplace seizures (sit-down strikes), challenges to
Jim Crow in the south. And in 1936 this angry and militant mood also pushed
very close to the formation of a national Farmer-Labor Party that would have
been a major threat to the Democrats. Many formerly intransigent corporations
were forced to negotiate agreements with unions. The Democrats chose to “move
left” in that moment.

It’s also a
mistake to romanticize the New Deal. People talk of the 1930s WPA as the model
for “job guarantees” — that is, government as employer of last resort. But
there was still 17 percent unemployment in USA as late as 1940. Workers in the
WPA often had beefs such as low pay. Communists, socialists and syndicalists
organized unions and strikes among WPA workers. The gains that working class
people were able to win in the Thirties did not simply come about through
electoral politics.

Nor were the conservative, bureaucratic “international
unions” of the American Federal of Labor the vehicle either. They were more of
a road block — exactly why several hundred thousand workers had created new
grassroots unions from scratch by late 1934.

Smith is not
alone in pushing statist central planning as a solution. This concept is being
talked up lately by various state socialists, including people associated with
Jacobin magazine and DSA. These advocates often assume the state is simply a
class-neutral institution that could be taken hold of by the working class and
wielded for its purposes.

In reality
the state is not class-neutral but has class oppression built into its very
structure. For example, public sector workers are subordinate to managerialist
bureaucracies just as workers are in the private corporations. The day-to-day
workings of state institutions are controlled by the cadres of the bureaucratic
control class — state managers, high end professionals employed as experts,
prosecutors and judges, military and police brass. This is in addition to the
“professionals of representation” — the politicians — who are typically drawn
from either the business or bureaucratic control classes, that is, classes to
which working class people are subordinate.

As a top-down
approach to planning, statist central planning has no way to gain accurate information
about either public preferences for public goods and services or individual
consumer preferences. Statist central planning is also inherently
authoritarian. This is because it is based on a denial of self-management to
people who would be primarily affected by its decisions — consumers and
residents of communities, on the one hand, and workers in the various
industries who would continue to be subject to managerialist autocracy.

Self-management
means that people who are affected by decisions have control over those
decisions to the extent they are affected. There are many decisions in the
running of workplaces where the group who are primarily affected are the
workers whose activity makes up the production process. Taking self-management
seriously would require a form of distributed control in planning, where groups
who are primarily affected over certain decisions — such as residents of local
communities or workers in industries— have an independent sphere of
decision-making control. This is the basis of the syndicalist alternative of
distributed planning, discussed below.

State
socialists will sometimes make noises about “worker control” as an element of
central planning, but real collective power of workers over the production
process is inconsistent with the concept of central planning. If planning is to
be the activity of an elite group at a center, they will want to have their own
managers on site in workplaces to make sure their plans are carried out.Any talk of “worker control” always loses out
to this logic.

Statist
central planning can’t overcome either the exploitative or cost-shifting logic
of capitalism, which lies at the heart of the ecological crisis. Various
populations are directly impacted by pollution in various forms — such as the
impact of pesticide pollution on farm workers and rural communities or the
impact on air and water in local communities. The only way to overcome the
cost-shifting logic is for the affected populations — workers and communities —
to gain direct power to prevent being polluted on. For global warming, this
means the population in general needs a direct form of popular power that would
enable the people to directly control the allowable emissions into the
atmosphere.

As difficult
as it may be, we need a transition to a self-managed, worker-controlled
socialist political economy if we’re going to have a solution to the ecological
crisis of the present era. But this transition can only really come out of the
building up of a powerful, participatory movement of the oppressed majority in
the course of struggles against the present regime.

The Syndicalist Alternative for an
Eco-socialist Future

The problem
is not that people struggle for immediate changes that are within our power to
currently push for. Rather, the issue is how we pursue change. Changes can be
fought for in different ways.

The basic
problem with the electoral socialist (“democratic socialist”) strategy is its
reliance on methods that ask working class people to look to “professionals of
representation” to do things for us. This approach tends to build up — and
crucially rely upon — bureaucratic layers that are apart from — and not
effectively controllable by — rank-and-file working class people. These are
approaches that build up layers of professional politicians in office, paid
political party machines, lobbyists, or negotiations on our behalf by the paid
apparatus of the unions — paid officials and staff, or the paid staff in the
big non-profits.

Syndicalists
refer to these as reformist methods (for lack of a better term). Not because
we’re opposed to the fight for reforms. Any fight for a less-than-total change
(such as more money for schools or more nurse staffing) is a “reform.” The
methods favored by the electoral socialists are “reformist” because they
undermine the building of a movement for more far-reaching change. The history
of the past century shows that these bureaucratic layers end up as a barrier to
building the struggle for a transition to a worker-controlled socialist mode of
production.

We can say
that an approach to action and organization for change is non-reformist to the
extent that it builds rank-and-file controlled mass organizations, relies on
and builds participation in militant collective actions such as strikes, and
builds self-confidence, self-reliance, organizing skills, wider active
participation, and wider solidarity between different groups among the
oppressed and exploited majority.

Syndicalism
is a strategy for change based on non-reformist forms of action and
organization. Non-reformist forms of organization of struggle are based on
control by the members through participatory democracy and elected delegates,
such as elected shop delegates and elected negotiating committees in
workplaces.And the use of similar
grassroots democracy in other organizations that working class people can build
such as tenant unions. Non-reformist forms of action are disruptive of
“business as usual” and are built on collective participation, such as strikes,
occupations, and militant marches.

A key way the
electoral socialist and syndicalist approaches differ is their effect on the
process that Marxists sometimes call class formation. This is the more or less
protracted process through which the working class overcomes fatalism and
internal divisions (as on lines of race or gender), acquires knowledge about
the system, and builds the confidence, organizational capacity and the
aspiration for social change. Through this process the working class “forms”
itself into a force that can effectively challenge the dominating classes for
control of society.

If people see
effective collective action spreading in the society around them, this may
change the way people see their situation. Once they perceive that this kind of
collective power is available to them as a real solution for their own issues,
this can change their perception of the kinds of change that is possible. The
actual experience of collective power can suggest a much deeper possibility of
change.

When
rank-and-file working class people participate directly in building worker
unions, participating in carrying out a strike with co-workers, or in building
a tenant union and organizing direct struggle against rent hikes or poor
building conditions, rank-and-file people are directly engaged — and this helps
people to learn how to organize, builds more of a sense that “We can make
change,” and people also learn directly about the system.

More people are
likely to come to the conclusion “We have the power to change the society” if they
see actual power of people like themselves being used effectively in
strikes,building takeovers, and other
kinds of mass actions. In other words, a movement of direct participation and
grassroots democracy builds in more people this sense of the possibility of
change from below.

On the other
hand, concentrating the decision-making power in the fight for social change
into bureaucratic layers of professional politicians and an entrenched union
bureaucracy tends to undermine this process because it doesn’t build confidence
and organizing skills among working class people. It fails to build the sense
that “We have the power in our hands to change things.” Thus a basic problem
with electoral socialism (“democratic socialism”) is that it undermines the
process of class formation.

The electoral
venue is also not favorable terrain for the working class struggle for changes
because the voting population tends to be skewed to the more affluent part of
the population. A large part of the working class do not see why they should
vote. They don’t see the politicians as looking out for their interests. The
non-voting population tends to be poorer — more working class — than the voting
population. This means the working class can’t bring the full force of its
numbers to bear.

A strategy
for change focused on elections and political parties tends to lead to a focus
on electing leaders to gain power in the state, to make changes for us. This
type of focus leads us away from a more independent form of working class
politics that is rooted in forms of collective action that ordinary people can
build directly and directly participate in — such as strikes, building direct
solidarity between different working class groups in the population, mass
protest campaigns around issues that we select, and the like.

To be clear,
I’m not here arguing that people shouldn’t vote, or that it makes no difference
to us who is elected. Often in fact it does, and independent worker and
community organizations can also direct their pressure on what politicians do.
But here I’m talking about our strategy for change. I’m arguing against a
strategy for change that relies upon — focuses on — the role of elected
officials, a political party, or the full-time paid union apparatus.

An
electoralist strategy leads to the development of political machines in which
mass organizations look to professional politicians and party operatives. This
type of practice tends to create a bureaucratic layer of professional
politicians, media, think-tanks and party operatives that develops its own
interests.

When the
strategy is focused on electing people to office in the state, college-educated
professionals and people with “executive experience” will tend to be favored as
candidates to “look good” in the media.And this means people of the professional and administrative layers will
tend to gain leadership positions in an electorally oriented party. This will
tend to diminish the ability of rank and file working class people to control
the party’s direction.

This is part of the process of the development of the
party as a separate bureaucratic layer with its own interests. Because they are
concerned with winning elections and keeping their hold on positions in the
state, this can lead them to oppose disruptive direct action by workers such as
strikes or workplace takeovers. There is a long history of electoral socialist
leaders taking this kind of stance.

To the extent
electoral socialist politics comes to dominate in the labor movement — as it
did in Europeafter World War 2 —
declining militancy and struggle also undermined the commitment to socialism.
The electoral socialist parties in Europe competed in elections through the
advocacy of various immediate reforms. This became the focus of the parties.
Sometimes they won elections.

At the head of a national government they found
that they had to “manage” capitalism — keep the capitalist regime running. If
they moved in too radical a direction they found they would lose middle class
votes — or the investor elite might panic and start moving their capital to
safe havens abroad. In some cases elements of the “deep state” — such as the
military and police forces — moved to overthrow them. Most of these parties
eventually changed their concept of what their purpose was. They gave up on the
goal of replacing capitalism with socialism.

Eco-syndicalism

Eco-syndicalism
is based on the recognition that workers — and direct worker and community
alliances — can be a force against the environmentally destructive actions of
capitalist firms. Toxic substances are transported by workers,
ground-water-destroying solvents are used in electronics assembly and damage
the health of workers, and pesticides poison farm workers. Industrial poisons
affect workers on the job first and pollute nearby working class neighborhoods.
Nurses have to deal with the effects of pollution on people’s bodies. Various
explosive derailments have shown how oil trains can be a danger to both
railroad workers and communities. The struggle of railroad workers for adequate
staffing on trains is part of the struggle against this danger.

Workers are a
potential force for resistance to decisions of employers that pollute or
contribute to global warming. Workers can also be a force for support of
alternatives on global warming, such as expanded public transit. An example of
working class resistance to environmental pollution were the various “green
bans” enacted by the Australian Building Laborer’s Federation back in the ‘70s
— such as a ban on transport or handling of uranium.

A recognition
of this relationship led to the development of an environmentalist tendency
among syndicalists in the ‘80s and ‘90s — eco-syndicalism (also called “green
syndicalism”). An example in the ‘80s was the organizing work of Judi Bari — a
member of the IWW and Earth First!. Working in the forested region of northwest
California, she attempted to develop an alliance of workers in the wood
products industry (and their unions) with environmentalists who were trying to
protect old growth forests against clear-cutting.

Worker and
community organizations can be a direct force against fossil fuel capitalism
in a variety of ways — such as the various actions against coal or oil
terminals on the Pacific Coast, or labor and community support for struggles of
indigenous people and other rural communities against polluting fossil fuel
projects, such as happened with the Standing Rock blockade in the Dakotas.
Unions can also be organized in workplaces of the “green” capitalist firms to
fight against low pay and other conditions I described earlier.

The different
strategies of syndicalists and electoral socialists tends to lead to different
conceptions of what “socialism” and “democracy” mean. Because politicians tend
to compete on the basis of what policies they will pursue through the state,
this encourages a state socialist view that socialism is a set of reforms
enacted top down through the managerialist bureaucracies of the state.
Certainly state socialists are an influential element in Democratic Socialists
of America.

I think a top
down form of power, controlled by the bureaucratic control class in state
management, is not going to work as a solution for the ecological challenges of
the present. The history of the “communist camp” countries of the mid-20th
century showed that they were also quite capable of pollution and ecological
destruction rooted in cost-shifting behavior.

On the other
hand, the syndicalist vision of self-managed socialism provides a plausible
basis for a solution for the environmental crisis because a federative,
distributed form of democratic planning places power in local communities and
workers in industries, and thus they have power to prevent ecologically
destructive decisions.

For syndicalists, socialism is about human liberation —
and a central part is the liberation of the working class from subordination
and exploitation in a regime where there are dominating classes on top. Thus
for syndicalism the transition to socialism means workers taking over and
collectively managing all the industries — including the public services. This
is socialism created frombelow —
created by the working class itself.

Syndicalist
movements historically advocated a planned economy based on a distributed model
of democratic planning, rooted in assemblies in neighborhoods and workplaces.
With both residents of communities and worker production organizations each
having the power to make decisions in developing plans for its own area, a
distributed, federative system of grassroots planning uses delegate congresses
or councils and systems of negotiation to “adjust” the proposals and aims of
the various groups to each other.

Examples of libertarian socialist distributed
planning models include the negotiated coordination proposals of the World War
1 era guild socialists, the 1930s Spanish anarcho-syndicalist program of
neighborhood assemblies (“free municipalities”) and worker congresses, and the
more recent participatory planning model of Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert.

A 21st
century form of self-managed socialism would be a horizontally federated system
of production that can implement planning and coordination throughout industries
and over a wide region. This would enable workers to:

Gain control
over technological development,

Re-organize
jobs and education to eliminate the bureaucratic concentration of power in the
hands of managers and high-end professionals, develop worker skills, and work
to integrate decision-making and conceptualization with the doing of the
physical work,

Reduce the
working week and share work responsibilities among all who can work, and

Create a new
logic of development for technology that is friendly to workers and the
environment.

A purely
localistic focus and purely fragmented control of separate workplaces (such as
worker cooperatives in a market economy) is not enough. Overall coordination is
needed to move social production away from subordination to market pressures
and the “grow or die” imperative of capitalism and build solidarity between
regions. There also needs to be direct, communal accountability for what is
produced and for effects on the community and environment.

The
protection of the ecological commons requires a directly communal form of
social governance and control over the aims of production. This means direct
empowerment of the masses who would be directly polluted on or directly
affected by environmental degradation. This is necessary to end the
ecologically destructive cost-shifting behavior that is a structural feature of
both capitalism and bureaucratic statism. Direct communal democracy and direct
worker management of industry provide the two essential elements for a libertarian
eco-socialist program.